“I was the crazy one.”
Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said in a Washington Post op-ed that people called her nuts when she visited mosques, union halls and local chambers of commerce and said there was a real possibility Donald Trump would win the general election.
Dingell apparently has a penchant for bucking the polls. She says she knew Hillary Clinton was in trouble in Michigan during the Democratic primary, despite polls giving her a lead of greater than 20 points. Bernie Sanders won the primary by 1.5 percentage points.
Heading into Election Day, Clinton had a 3-point polling lead in a state that’s voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election since Bill Clinton won it in 1992. Most people (myself, a Michigan native, included) wrote the state off for Clinton, although last minute campaigning there by Trump and Clinton suggests the campaigns thought it was a true toss-up.
The state still hasn’t been officially declared for Trump: With every precinct reporting, he has a 0.3 percentage point lead, ahead by fewer than 12,000 votes in a state where almost 5 million people cast a vote for president on their ballot.
Dingell gives credit to President Obama for saving the auto industry, but says most local residents don’t see it in their daily lives. “What many keep missing is that working men and women don’t see this in their lives. They feel the system is rigged against them. And those workers are white, black, Hispanic, Muslim — all races, creeds and colors. Economic and national security fears overcame all other factors when they walked into the voting booth,” Dingell writes.
“From the beginning, I knew the Downrivers would support Trump both in the Republican primary and in the general,” Dingell says, referring to south Detroit suburbs in Wayne County. “I witness the emotions and passions of their residents every day, and I believe they are what elected Trump president.”
Congressional district-level voting data doesn’t appear to be available yet. But 67 percent of Wayne County voted for Clinton, while 73 percent voted for Obama in 2012. About 16 percent of the votes cast in Michigan in 2016 came from Wayne County.
The other county that Dingell partially represents is Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan. That county actually gave Clinton 1 additional percentage point of the vote than it gave Obama in 2012.
Jason Russell is the contributors editor for the Washington Examiner.
